We Shall Be Monsters
by Mostlyeviloverlord
Summary: What if Victor decided to bring the female creature to life? What if she didn't agree with the vows made before her life even began? What if she rebelled? An AU of Frankenstein from her point of view, set in 1790s Edinburgh. - T for some violence, adult themes, mild language
1. Prologue: Victor

Prologue: Victor

Most people would never make a monster of their own choosing. Even fewer would choose to do it twice.

Victor liked to think, though, that the form in front of him was _not_ his choice. He was being forced into this second abominable act. If he had known that the first would be so terrible before beginning his journey, he would not be here today.

It was only meant to be an experiment, but one that had turned out to have its own thoughts, and will-and demands. Demands he now had to meet, or risk the lives of other people. Not that he thought of them as he stared at the female body.

What would happen to _him_ if everyone knew? If his father, Henry, or Elizabeth found out, after all that had happened at their home in Geneva-the atrocities done to William and Justine?

Worse, what if the world-the unworthy, stupid, selfish world-saw the flame of knowledge that he had lit, and attempted to replicate his actions?

No-no one would be able to do what he had done. He alone knew the secret. He alone had spent the hours-the _years_ -learning the formula behind artificial life. But what horrors might other, less intelligent men work when he, a genius, had been so foolish?

Foolish to bring his first work to fruition, and foolish to attempt it again.

Victor had had many second thoughts, many sleepless nights wracked with terror as he hurtled toward this point. He felt the effects of those wild, feverish nights driving him half-mad now, a fever burning through his very soul. No-he would not be foolish again. He would stop this madness-!

He lifted the scalpel over the body, suddenly anxious to destroy it.

And yet, something stopped him at the last moment, just before he plunged the blade into his work. Who knew what pain her mate might inflict on the world should Victor destroy her now? The creature had already shown itself more than capable of terror when rejected. And there was no way Victor might stop it on his own. That vile insect was too strong, too fast, too physiologically perfect to defeat hand to hand.

Perhaps, Victor considered, this female still held the key to his peace and salvation. If he did only one extra task … There might still be a way to send the demons of his nightmares away forever.

Victor nodded this time as he prepared the final steps of his task. Yes, they'd go away. The monster had at least kept his own promises, of that he'd seen enough proof.

And hopefully, once out of sight, they'd tear one another apart. They were made for destruction. So let them wreak it on each other.

The scientist bothered only to name himself.

"Victor," he had said with a gesture to his chest, and eventually she repeated it. But it didn't take long before the female creature became distracted with an apple left within her reach on the floor. She caught it between her scarred hands and rolled it between her palms. She'd been easily distracted since coming to life-like a child.

Victor supposed this was what the other might have been like … had he stayed near it at all.

But how could he have lingered? When that horrible thing opened its eyes, moved its twisted black lips, came for him? A lesser mortal might have fainted, prey to the creature's first violent impulses. Victor had done the wiser thing and fled.

And yet, not the wisest thing he might have done. Ah, if he could go back and put an end to the creature while it was still so weak…

As he had done ceaselessly for hours, he observed the childlike monstrosity, perched on the edge of her chair with his fingers to his mouth, his eyes wild with lack of sleep. He knew he had made mistakes. How could he not, after the conversation he had had with the other?

Here, however, watching a full-grown woman learn to giggle for the first time through tangles of long dark hair nearly as wild as the scientist's own, Victor could almost feel redemption at his fingertips.

He rose, drawing the creature's attention, and took a step forward towards this makeshift daughter he had built.

But the moment those eyes fixed on him, Victor shuddered and drew to a halt. He'd tried harder with the eyes, tried to make them less monstrous. But they were still watery and yellow-horrible to look upon. Again, now that he had finished his months of feverish toil, he felt breathless and dizzy with disgust.

It didn't matter that each limb was perfect, that the female should have moved with dazzling grace; the unnatural circumstances of her birth, like the male, had somehow distorted even this. Animation had made them both hellish. Demons with demonic impulses, which were already displayed in the male. This being, this monster, moved like her mate; would she not also grow to think like her mate?

What a fool Victor had been to hope that this destruction might work in his favor.

The creature made a grunt-of inquiry? Distress? Innocent curiosity? Victor ignored it.

In the laboratory, there were many chemicals, many delicate and dangerous items that required a steady hand and extra care. Victor reached out and smashed a container of kerosene on the floor.

As the creature startled at the loud noise, Victor lifted a candle from his desk, closed his eyes only a moment to mourn his mistakes, and hurled the flame into the kerosene.

The poor stupid monster didn't even know enough to cry out yet, to stay away from the fire. Victor counted on that as he fled into the salt-sprayed darkness around the island hovel.

He expected to feel a moment of loss for all of his notes, his years of research. Yet, as the flames grew, he felt only relief. "Never again!" he shouted into the inferno spilling out the open door. "Never again will anyone replicate this horror!"

Then, scalpel still in hand, he turned to face the cold Scottish darkness with the heat of the fire at his back. Let the consequences come, if they must. He would be ready for them.


	2. Prologue: The Creature

Prologue: The Creature

He came for his bride, expecting the light of heaven. Instead, he found the fires of hell, consuming all that he might have loved.

"What have you done?" he bellowed at the small figure standing in front of the burning laboratory. Frankenstein trembled all over, but he did not faint or flee in the face of his creation's rage. "You made a promise, Victor Frankenstein-you dare to break it now?"

"Yes," he cried as sparks burst in the air behind him, "I dare! I shall never create another like you, nor shall anyone else on this earth!"

He loomed over his creator. How diminutive Frankenstein was, how frail. How imperfect and perfect at once. "I reasoned with you before, but now I see you were unworthy of my efforts. If you insist, Frankenstein, I can bypass reason with force." He raised a finger to Victor's face. "You are my creator, but I am your master; obey!"

"There is nothing you can do to me," Victor seethed in return, wielding a tiny and near-harmless scalpel for a weapon. "You shall never, _never_ have your vile request."

In his despair, he laughed at the smoke-filled night sky. "And yet you believe _me_ the monster."

"You _are_ the monster!" Victor shouted, his voice shrill and broken with exhaustion. "You and your fellow demon both. If I had not, together you might have caused chaos and bloodshed rather than go away into the wilderness."

"Do you believe me so faithless?" he asked. "I have not broken my promises. I would have honored this one, too."

"Would she have honored this promise?" asked Victor, gesturing back into the ruin. "A vow made before her birth? Or would she have resisted, and left you to the world of men-there to be abused as you were, and there to wreak further destruction? You both would have ruined everything I could love."

"I still can do that," he threatened. "I still have revenge-if you destroy what I might have loved, I can destroy every cause you have to rejoice in this world."

Their tirade was interrupted by a loud crash beyond the building. Startled, he viewed the ruin, as did his creator by his side. He and Frankenstein in silence walked quickly around the side of the building. There, he found a broken window. Among the shards on the earth were footprints trailing into the sea.

Victor caught his breath. "She survived."

He felt his heart drum against his chest. "Rejoice, creator; I may stay my revenge upon you yet."


	3. Chapter 1

**Readers of the original _Frankenstein_ might recognize a familiar face in this chapter! (Who for some reason I couldn't add into the list of characters.) **

**Disclaimer: I'm not Mary Shelley, whether in ghost form or revived from the dead. Though _Frankenstein_ is in the public domain, I don't own the story. **

* * *

DE LACEY: It is night in the Garden of Eden. Do you see the moon?

CREATURE: There. There it is.

DE LACEY: Describe it to me.

CREATURE: Solitary.

DE LACEY: That's a good word. Good.

CREATURE: And sad, like me.

DE LACEY: Why is it sad?

CREATURE: Because it is solitary.

 _-_ Nick Dear, _Frankenstein_ , scene 18

* * *

A bright-white flash of lightning pierced the grime of the tenement window. Seconds later, rain began to thud against the building, seeking any way inside.

Eva set down her book and stared out at what she could see of the blue-black sky, hungry for another glimpse of light to cut through the darkness.

There-another one, temporarily overpowering the candles lighting the tiny shared room. The lightning broke through not only the acrid, claustrophobic tenement, but another, deeper darkness within her. A darkness nothing had been able to shatter.

While others had lifetimes behind them, whether long or short or difficult, Eva had nothing. Not even the shape of things in her past.

But the flash-it had come the closest so far to breaking that darkness. It struck a void, a negative, like the sunspots she could see against the inside of her eyelids, and illuminated the edges of something at the back of her brain.

Eva flung the window open so that she could lean out into the storm, ignorant of the damp. Rain soaked her hair, her dress, her skin as she searched the sky for another bolt of light. Foolish, yes-but she could almost see what she was missing. Almost, if she looked just a bit longer.

Lightning, with thunder fast on its heels, tore across the gray Scottish sky. Eva felt the crackle in the air across her skin, blinked away more sunspots shaped like a ragged scar. She waited, her fingers white-knuckled on the sill, for inspiration to come.

 _When the stars threw down their spears_

 _And water'd heaven with their tears:_

 _Did he smile his work to see?_

 _Did he who made the Lamb make…_

But the lightning, again, had only scratched the edge of something buried, which she could not unearth.

Eva cut a glare at the sky, as if the creator of lightning storms were holding that vital information back from her. Her hooded gaze turned downward, to the stories of stone below her, the source of the caked-on stench and endless chatter of too many bodies crammed into one space. The assault on her senses wasn't helping her concentration. How anyone could think here, she'd never know.

She had to get out into the storm.

A shapeless blue coat, trousers, and a cap-the clothing of a laborer-became her disguise. Most dresses were regrettably short on her, even for a lower-class woman. They attracted questions. It was easier to go about dressed as a man once she left her tiny shared bedroom.

The tenement contained hundreds of rooms, but in the storm, many shelter-seekers huddled on the steps. At the top of the staircase, she loomed over these, still careful to keep her hat low.

Every step had to be deliberate, carefully controlled. As hidden as possible behind long, loose fabric. The way she moved, from the roll of her feet on the ground to the swing of her arms as she walked, wasn't _quite_ normal. It wasn't that she was ungainly, or that her steps were hitched by pain or a restricted range of motion. Her movements were simply … unnatural, as if her joints and bones were only playing at being human, and no amount of mimicry could fool watchful, suspicious eyes.

So Eva pressed herself close to the wall as she descended, trying to attribute the awkwardness of her gait to an equally awkward route. She stayed silent, hoping no one would look at her too closely before she made it out into the gale.

No-the subsequent flashes of lightning didn't bring her further illumination other than brief, physical bursts in the sky. Disappointing. But out here … maybe that was all right. She could worry about that later. This temporary failure was no reason to go scurrying back inside in defeat.

The sheer force of the downpour had chased almost everyone inside. But she felt her arms spreading, her face tilting back beneath the brim of her hat to catch as much of the rain as she could.

There were moments she hated being alone. But times like this, surrounded by chaos she chose, she thought she could manage it for a long, long while.

She soon found another benefit: the street along South Bridge, full of shops and backed by tenements-including hers-had been vacated just enough for her to walk along it without raising a fuss.

The shopkeepers had gone inside, moving crates of their wares in bit by bit. One of them had left a crate of apples unattended. Eva paused at the edge of a building, eyeing the shiny fruit and then the lighted windows of the shop.

With the tingle of electricity in the air still making her feel giddy, temptation was just a _bit_ too much.

In the marketplace during sunny days, the very few times she'd been out, she knew the rule. Pay quickly, keep your voice and head down, speak as little as possible, don't attract attention.

But if people weren't around? Don't seek them out. It would hurt everyone far more if she did and someone decided to scream.

She wrapped her fingers around a red orb as she passed and bit into the crisp flesh, precisely timed with yet another crash of lightning.

Someone shouted across the alley from another Old Town tenement. It was not so dark out that she couldn't see wide eyes, a rounded mouth, a look of horror from through the window.

Eva's fingers clenched harder around the stolen fruit. She waited, an animal frozen in the moment before fight or flight. Would the other person scream?

No-but they did shout for help. Familiar words reached her: Monster, devil, demon. More voices joined the first, along with shadows behind illuminated windows.

She hid her face behind hunched shoulders and a sudden turn back towards her tenement. She dropped the apple in the mud in case it could incriminate her further. Curses were among the first words she learned, and they fell from her lips as she left the South Bridge and re-entered the Pandemonium of the creaky, overcrowded building.

The unwashed, exhausted demons huddled on the steps gave her a hundred leery stares, but she didn't slow down, even to readjust her anxious stride.

Would they come racing inside to find her?

Even when her door was shut, she found her hands creeping up to cover her uncanny features.

How stupid could she have been, exposing her face like that? Already she could hear the shouts, feel the flung rocks and clubs battering her skin. Her heart thudded, as if she were running once more, again taking refuge for days in a Greyfriars mausoleum. They hadn't looked for her among the dead. But would that be enough this time?

The door opened behind her and she spun, wild-eyed.

Agatha poked her head into the room, her yellow plait swinging over her shoulder. "Eva?" A gentle query, edged in confusion and a foreign accent. She remained mostly behind the door in a partial cringe.

Eva forced her hands and eyes down. She faltered a moment before reaching for the table and a half-skinned potato. Her thumb rubbed over the slick and rough patches marked by where she'd peeled away the skin. She set the knife to it once more, and slices fell like curling dead leaves into a pan.

The door closed, and the weight of Agatha's stare rested hot on her shoulder. Eva's lips pressed as she tried to ignore the look.

"Are you all right? You're soaking wet." Agatha had stepped close to see for herself, eyes narrowed in a slight squint.

Eva nodded once, carving away the last of the brown skin and dropping the slippery peeled root into a pot. She grabbed another, as if that would stave off any further prying.

Of course, this being Agatha, nothing would. "You were outside?"

"Just opened the window." Her voice was husky and hoarse and deep, forcing her to speak softly as often as possible. Eva paused and, at the same moment, both of them glanced to the open frame. Rain dripped down the wall beneath the sill, puddling on the floor. Drops had scattered over the table, and the cover of Eva's book. She grimaced.

"Eva!" Agatha lapsed into French as she darted across the room and slammed the window shut. "We're all going to get sick if you let in the cold!"

"Sorry." Her heart was still thudding to the point that she had to set down the potato and knife or risk cutting herself.

"You've forgotten an awful lot of things, but how could you be so foolish as to forget that?" Agatha scolded. She took a breath as if to continue her tirade, and then paused, catching herself. "No-I'm sorry, Eva. I shouldn't have-"

"Not you." Eva made a dismissive gesture. She'd endured far worse than a somewhat sharp reminder. She picked up the book she'd been reading- _Songs of Innocence and Experience-_ and swept her sleeve over the cover.

Agatha gave her another long look, and Eva became self-conscious of the bulky men's clothes she was wearing and the way the wet fabric dripped and clung incriminatingly to her skin. "You _were_ outside. The window alone couldn't get you drenched like that."

What use was there in lying? She was no good at it around those with far more practice. "I thought … I thought I remembered something."

Agatha caught Eva's shoulder. She had to reach up to do so; Eva stood as tall as a man. "The lightning jarred your memory?" The young woman made some exclamation in French. "We need to have these wild storms more often!" She grabbed one of Eva's hands. Eva noticed that her flinch was minimal this time. "Do you think a storm had to do with your accident?"

Both of them glanced down at Eva's hands, which she held out for inspection. Incisions that had only recently turned to scars lined her fingers and wrists at the joints and along major vein networks, vanishing up her sleeves to cover her whole body. They emerged at her collar, trailing up her jaw to weave between the line of her dark hair and her sallow skin.

Whatever had hurt her had also left some kind of unnatural damage to her eyes, giving her yellow, bloodshot sclera and oddly gray irises. No one liked to meet her gaze, even though Agatha usually made the effort.

Then, of course, there was the way she moved, which she had to hide when among other people.

What accident could cause such damage and leave her alive?

But Agatha persistently ignored this logic. Agatha believed Eva was the victim of some accident that had robbed her of her memory and left deformity in its place. It was a nice explanation, but there was too much amiss about the theory.

For one, an amnesiac should remember much more than Eva could. Just the other day, Agatha had-unwittingly, of course-teased her over forgetting what dreams were. And there were hundreds of other little nuances to life in Edinburgh, only ever adding up, never decreasing. But no matter what other evidence presented itself, Agatha stubbornly clung to her conclusion.

Perhaps because the alternative was, even for someone so full of empathy, simply too much to bear.

"I'm sorry," Eva exhaled. The gravel in her voice was especially strong with the weight of disappointment. "Nothing else."

"You're sure? That was the first thing you've recalled since you came here," Agatha persisted.

Eva gave her a close-lipped smile. "Yes. But … nothing else."

Thunder rumbled overhead, followed by a series of German curses through the thin wall behind the stove. Agatha's look turned dry. Her hand fell from Eva's. "There goes Monsieur Schneider again, cursing God. Not the wisest idea in a lightning storm."

Eva snorted. Not that she had seen anyone smitten before, and there was a lot of cursing God in the tenement. Maybe there was a Creator she could curse as well, to join in the chorus of bitterness. But when she considered it, there was only one being that came to mind.

The face, looming over her with an odd, twisted expression she still couldn't quite name. But a mortal one, not a celestial being gazing with the indifference so many around her seemed to prescribe on Him.

"Railing against the heavens doesn't ever seem to help," Agatha said, putting a spoon in the pan of potato skins. There was a new edge to her tone. She never complained aloud, but what she didn't say formed the edges of something that had gone wrong in her life, too.

"Maybe they … rail," Eva tasted the new word, "against the wrong person. Someone else caused their suffering."

Agatha gave her a curious look. But she shook her head, giving a crooked and slight smile. "If I knew who to blame…" she said, deflecting attention. The Frenchwoman smiled in return and went back to making dinner.

But Eva did have a guess as to whom she'd direct her curses if she had only a little more information about who he was. And it wasn't God.


	4. Chapter 2

**Happy Halloween 2018! There'll be a few shout-outs to other Frankenstein adaptations or retellings; how many can you find?**

 **Disclaimer: I'm not Mary Shelley, whether in ghost form or revived from the dead. Though** ** _Frankenstein_** **is in the public domain, I don't own the story.**

* * *

 _There were no dreams in that darkness. All that had happened before was still, black silence, and eternal peace._

 _So much sharper was the contrast, then, when she awoke in a burst of pain and light. Unable to breathe, utterly paralyzed, save for the rapid pounding of the newly awakened heart in her chest._

 _Light flashed above her, making her flinch. The simple motion sent sparks of pain through a new, raw nervous system, and she gasped. But that desperate gasp-how glorious, how cold and pure! Then another, and another, till the rhythms settled into a natural pattern in harmony with the thudding of her heart._

 _The creature lay on her back, blinking and slowly grasping her new reality, cold and stiff as it was. She experimented with movement, moving her uncooperative fingers until she could lift her hands over her eyes. Her head lolled from side to side after a moment, not content with just herself but with the immediate world._

 _As she made sense of light and dark, panting and shivering on the chilly surface beneath her skin, and then paused when a blurry shape moved and bent over her. A face. She relaxed for only a moment before the rest of the being's face twisted. The shape of the mouth sent an odd tightening through her chest despite the feeling of familiarity. Some flicker of instinct found the look … unsettling._

 _Then the room burst into flames, consuming the shape and everything around her._

If the tenement was loud at night, it was almost deafening during the morning, when its occupants came home from their labors or rose to begin them. Schneider, next door, started up another round of complaints at the noise and the light and his hangover, which woke Eva from her sleeping place on the floor.

She squinted at the ceiling and put the back of her hand to her forehead. "He wants quiet. Yet he shouts."

Up on the bed, Agatha moaned and pulled up her blanket higher at Eva's murmur. She whined something unintelligible in French, which made Eva smirk despite not understanding.

Her smirk slid from her lips as she thought back to her dream. Her nighttime visions were rare, probably because there wasn't much memory to draw from.

But this … the sensations, the face, the fire…

Someone else who believed in such things might call it a portent, while others might have dismissed it as a manifestation of fear.

Eva pressed her fingers harder against her skin. Maybe it was just fear. Not of the memory, but of her near miss when she'd left the tenement. Fire and pain surely awaited her if she were discovered by the general population.

She listened to Schneider complain up until he left, willing him to be silent. Reluctantly, Agatha rose, kicked off her blankets, and shuffled to the small stove.

"Too close," Eva said without looking up, already aware that Agatha was lighting the match near her face and hair. Her vision, Eva was both glad and devastated to learn, was rather poor.

"I'll be fine."

Eva grunted and got up off the floor. She reached to take the matches from Agatha before she could strike it and possibly ignite the wisps that had come loose from her braid.

As she did, Agatha pulled back much further than she needed to. The box almost fell to the floor, and Eva only just caught it.

Wearing a pinched expression Eva recognized as impatience, Agatha set down a pan on the stove with a clank. "Did anyone see you?"

Eva was silent. She crouched to light the stove.

"Last night. When you left. Did anyone see?"

She shook out the match, leaving a trail of smoke in the air.

" _Eva_." Agatha's voice could never really be harsh. It was too light and sweet. But she certainly could manage sternness and, even worse, disappointment.

Trying to keep her face neutral, Eva stood. She let her hair fall like a dark curtain between them. "Yes."

"Why? Why did you leave?"

"I remembered. A little, but … something."

Agatha nodded. At least she understood how vital this was, even for a small slip of memory. "What did they do?"

Eva's sigh rumbled in her throat, almost becoming a growl. "They shouted." As usual.

"They followed you?"

Her eyes, which even the nearsighted Agatha avoided, slid to the door. Even among the building's noise, they would have noticed someone trying to enter. "Obviously not. It was too dark."

"But under different circumstances, they might have," Agatha pried.

"Maybe. But…" Eva shrugged. "They would come for me, not you. I am the monster they fear."

"Don't call yourself that," Agatha scolded. "They are ignorant, small-minded, awful people, and you need not be like them."

Eva fidgeted with the handle of a spoon. "How," she asked, "do I grow, if I do not go out there?"

"You have books-"

"I learn," Eva interrupted, nodding in agreement, "from books. But I do not _remember_ from books. I remembered…" She pointed to the window. "By going outside."

"And if that's not enough? What if it only brings you harm?" Agatha protested.

Both women turned sharply to the wall opposite M. Schneider's, interrupted by a cry of pain, rather than complaint, followed by a harsh and bitter remark. Though the tongue was foreign, Eva did not need to guess at the words' meaning.

Her pain, the foundation of her earliest existence, had shifted to others' bitterness. The ache of pain past and pain ongoing without a foreseeable end. And that bitterness bled into a vicious cycle that Eva was not unfamiliar with.

In the angry, fetid living quarters, that vicious cycle usually fell on women, children, and the weak.

Eva was halfway across the small flat before Agatha exclaimed, "Wait!"

The smaller woman raced to the door and flung out her arms. She planted herself in Eva's path, trembling. "Wait-you cannot!"

Again, a voice cried out.

"If I don't, whoever that is-" Eva jabbed a finger at the wall, "-will get hurt!"

"They'll hurt you, too!" Agatha looked wildly around the room as if to indicate the whole building. "Everyone will. All it will take is a scream, and our peace-fragile as it is-will be destroyed."

"I don't care." Eva's fists clenched. She wanted to push Agatha aside, to shatter the doors in her path, to confront the bringer of violence. With her presence alone, she would stop the attack, and a simple gesture would make sure it never occurred again.

"Leaving here will only cause you harm. For all you know, someone is still searching for you from last night." Eva felt guilt wrench her insides. "Creating a scene here could lead them to you!"

Despite her words and the thundering of her heart in her ears, she couldn't move. The horrified face from last night-from every night before she'd found Agatha-hovered before her eyes.

Eva rocked back on her heels. "I-I want to help." She heard her voice falter.

There was a shine to Agatha's eyes, but she did not move from the door. "I will go by later," she promised. "To make sure everything is all right after the husband leaves for work."

"Why not now?"

Her expression threatened to crumple around the mouth, the brows. "To go now would endanger you for certain-but it would also threaten the wife later, whenever you and I are not around. There is nothing more we can do."

"Why must it be so?"

At last, Agatha lowered her arms from the door. "I don't understand."

"I do not like inconsistency." Eva bit off each syllable. "Nor hypocrisy. Yet everyone seems to practice both, to the detriment of those around and beneath them. 'And deadlier far, our vices, whose deep taint with slow perdition murders the whole man, his body and his soul!'"

Her flatmate looked blank at the English poetry recitation, though Eva's voice had been clearer and more confident than usual.

Frustrated, Eva pursed her lips and tried again, halting, "Men say to do one thing, and they do the opposite when it suits them. Be a good example, but only in public. Give, but only to people you like. Be kind, except when someone is hideous." She froze as the last word left her mouth. Her teeth clenched, and she bowed her head.

"Their hypocrisy doesn't stop you from being kind," Agatha suggested as she crossed over to the tiny stove. "While you shouldn't be seen, you could help in small ways."

"I do not think humanity can be helped." Eva made a dismissive gesture.

"You speak like you're separate from our own race."

Eva rubbed her brow, watching the way the scars blurred in her vision with their proximity to her face. "My … existence-" she gestured to herself with her other hand, "-has given me different experiences from the rest of humanity."

For one, she doubted that most other people had had to spend a week in a kirkyard, hidden in a mausoleum with only the bones of its occupant for company, all while searchers called for blood. She doubted that most people knew what it was like to fear leaving their homes except under cover of darkness. Whether she was human beneath the deformity or not, she was still separate.

"Maybe," she began carefully, "being seen would help me remember. I am so different that someone might know."

Agatha quickly shook her head. "What if violence like this, not a storm, caused your accident? You might bring your former attacker back to you."

Eva made a sound of frustration. "So! I cannot help! I cannot seek out my own memories! I cannot even work to help pay for all this." She swept her hand at the tiny tenement. "What _can_ I do, then? It is useless simply to wait for more lightning to strike my empty memory."

The tiny Frenchwoman closed her eyes and pressed her forehead into her palms. "I wish I could help you more, Eva. I am just afraid you'll get hurt." She drew in a breath and lifted her shoulders but not her eyes. "This situation cannot be helped. But if we're careful about it, and we avoid unnecessary risks, perhaps we can help yours."

"How?" Eva's voice was sullen.

"Well, you can't get very far in life without a name, can you? How will we find who you were safely?" Agatha laughed and lightly nudged Eva's shoulder to show that she was teasing. At least she seemed to have set aside, if not forgotten, the possible repercussions of Eva leaving.

"You gave me one," Eva reminded her.

"I meant that one you can remember. _Your_ name. Your memories, if we can ever get them back."

Memories she'd had to go outside to recall, risking her safety and-by extension-Agatha's. Perhaps it wasn't worth it. So many people might go on without memories, learning to create new ones for herself.

Eva examined her hands again. The scars could fade in time. She could always affect a limp to hide the unnatural motion of her stride.

Her eyes were the real problem, though. Nothing could hide their unsettling appearance.

Agatha had set about making breakfast while Eva lost herself in thought. She turned on her heel and burst, "Mary?"

It was something of a game, at least to Agatha. An attempt to jar loose some lost bit of data. Her flatmate hoped hearing her original moniker-whatever it had been-would help draw out other secrets from the darkness.

"No, not familiar," Eva replied, deadpan.

How could she explain that her earliest names had been "demon" or "monster?" Or "Ahhhhwhatisthatthing?!"

Agatha wrinkled her nose in concentration. "Beatrice? Eliza? Jane?"

"You tried Jane before."

"And you're hardly trying at all," Agatha pointed out.

And Eva could not miss the deliberate change of subject. Again, she tapped the side of her head, hard and impatient. "These names, the information you give … Shovelfuls of dirt in a hole with no bottom. They bring up nothing."

"So," Agatha said, "you don't _want_ to remember anything?" Her hands clenched at her skirt as if to emulate anger, but her round face only took on a look of pity, her eyes already shining with easily-summoned tears. "What if you have someone out there looking for you? A family? Don't they deserve to know what happened to you?"

Thunder rumbled across the sky again. Eva closed her eyes. What if those close to her had caused … this?

 _Did he who made the Lamb make thee?_

If she ever even found out the truth, it would have to be something she'd resolve later. There was more to Agatha's emotional outburst, Eva knew. Death and an ocean had separated the woman from her family. Perhaps if her brother and his wife had not gone on to the Americas, if her father was not dead from heart failure following some terrible shock, she might not have tried so hard to restore Eva to her lost former self.

She drew out the chair from the table and sat, giving Agatha a penitent look under her lashes. "Try again?"

Agatha gave her a pout in response. But though she folded her arms, she answered, "Rebecca? Or Brona?"

"No."

"Lily?"

"No." Too fast; Agatha's expression was pinching again. Eva winced.

"One more," the Frenchwoman decided, her tone suggesting that she was done with the game for now. She bit at her lip, considering. "Victoria?"

Eva sighed. "Victoria is not…" Her words caught in her throat. Carefully, she mouthed the word again, feeling the catch of her teeth on her lower lip, the click of her tongue against the roof of her mouth.

A flash of cold blue-white light, accompanied by raw nerves and gasping breaths. A tiny room, the smell of death, a face. Her dream, just before the noise of her surroundings woke her.

But the name wasn't quite right…

Staring somewhere beyond Agatha, she murmured, "Victor?"

"You remember something?" demanded Agatha. "Victor? Who's Victor?" She dropped to her knees, taking one of Eva's scarred hands.

Yes, she did remember. But something about the memory, faint as it was, and the darkness behind it was … wrong. Wrong enough that Eva closed her mouth. Gave a small, apologetic smile and shook her head. Even with all the questions rattling her brain and squeezing her chest, Agatha wasn't likely to understand enough to give answers.

"I know no Victor … but I can ask around for you," Agatha insisted. "While I am at work." The implication being that Eva sit inside and wait.

She made a face. "Agatha-"

"And please, don't worry about not being able to work. I'll manage all right." As if reminded, a bell tolled the hour across the city, and she turned to get her things. See if you can remember anything else while I am gone today."

Eva took a step toward her. "What if-"

"And stay inside," Agatha said as she donned a linen jacket and a bonnet.

The door closed on Eva's protests.


	5. Chapter 3

As a head's up, little bit of violence and abuse in this chapter. But, you can't have a faithful _Frankenstein_ retelling without the monster breaking some bones.

 **Standard disclaimer: Even if it's in the public domain, I don't own _Frankenstein_. **

* * *

For far too long, Eva stood before the door, clenching and unclenching her hands until her knuckles ached, grinding her teeth until her jaw begged her to stop.

She wanted to curse Agatha and her control over Eva and her words. Stay inside. She wanted to curse like M. Schneider cursed God.

Eva forcibly relaxed her jaw and huffed at the door. No, that would do little good. And it would be ungrateful, after all Agatha had done for her.

She'd be better off cursing this Victor, probably. And what good would that do, if he couldn't even hear her? If she didn't even know who he was?

Though she dragged her feet on the floor, she turned her face away from the door and put herself to work as a distraction.

Five hours later, she'd cleaned the entire flat. Twice. She'd swept, dusted, wiped, washed, polished, waxed, and swept again until, if the room were only a little bigger, and better located, it could have been fit for nobility. Perhaps not very choosy nobility, but all the same.

Eva tapped impatiently on the cover of Blake's closed book of poetry, staring at the walls for any sign of further dirt. But she'd been too thorough.

Already she'd tried to read, but frustration and impatience had made her drop the sturdy cover of the book at least three times. Still, it didn't cause anything else that needed cleaning to appear within their single room.

Eva sniffed, annoyed. The tenement reeked, but there wasn't much she could do about that. Not unless she wanted to try cleaning it all, and she could guess how far she'd get with that. If perhaps she only looked a _little_ less uncanny, it might be worth offering her skills to the rest of the tenement.

Assuming that the thick layer of dirt and soot wasn't the only thing holding the building together, of course.

But if it was? She could learn to build, if cleaning wasn't enough. She was strong, after all. She needed less rest, less food than anyone else. She could be useful.

She would only need to hide her face, or find a way to work alone rather than on a team. Surely that couldn't be impossible?

 _Stay inside._

And what of this Victor? Agatha meant well. But even Eva knew that only one name—and a name like that—wouldn't be much to go on. On top of working and feeding herself, she wasn't likely to have that much time that she could track down such elusive knowledge.

Only Eva knew what he looked like, besides.

She could guess what Agatha would say. That the price of leaving would be too much to pay, even for this.

"Knowledge," she told herself under her breath, "has always had a price." And that price would have to be worth the pursuit. Even if she had to fall from security to do it.

Eva stood up and went to the small trunk at the foot of the bed to reclaim her men's clothing. Perhaps she could pretend she was a male laborer who'd been in some accident. That couldn't be too far out of the realm of belief, considering the little she'd glimpsed of the downtrodden before coming to this tenement.

Whatever Agatha said about not working, about not searching for Victor on her own, it might be worth asking. It might be worth trying.

Just as Eva had tugged on the blue linen jacket, she heard Agatha's soft scolding once more. _Stay inside._

But who could stay cramped up in a tiny, dark room for forever?

Pushing Agatha's words out of her head, Eva grabbed the doorknob and plastered on a wide, hopefully friendly smile. She took a breath and turned the handle. The door parted, throwing a streak of light into the windowless hallway.

However, just before Eva could throw it open entirely, she paused. Pictured how grotesque her smile probably looked. Pictured the inevitable contorted mask of terror on the unsuspecting victim of her friendship.

"H'llo?" came a drunken slur.

"Ugh." She slammed the door shut. A squeak of alarm followed, and the footsteps shuffled quickly on. She ignored them.

Eva didn't know how to do anything except help. And no one wanted her to do that.

She had no destiny except to be controlled by others. How could that be her fate?

Next door, her neighbor pounded on the wall and snarled a foreign complaint. It was easy to guess at the meaning: _shut up._

Eva said nothing, but her eyes narrowed on the blank plaster.

The meek little voice of his wife spoke up, just barely audible. What was more audible, however, was the smack of flesh on flesh that followed immediately after. Again, and again, and again, interrupting as much as causing the woman's cries.

Her self-control, already at the breaking point, cracked. Heat flooded her body, propelling her to the door, which she slammed open as she entered the hallway. If there was anyone out there watching, she did not see for the haze of red clouding the edges of her vision. The strange curses were louder here, but they fell silent when she shoved on the neighbor's door.

The doorjamb splintered beneath her hands, letting the door swing open on weakened hinges. A man stood before her, brandishing a pan. His wife huddled on the floor just behind him, a round red mark burning her cheek.

While he might have been prepared to fight a moment ago, her neighbor almost dropped the pan at the sight of Eva. She stood rather tall—taller than him. She could only imagine how frightening the rest of her looked besides her height.

"You," she growled, and her voice grew raspier and more menacing than she'd ever allowed it here. "Stop. Now."

He staggered, his lips working silently. His fingers dipped into his shirt and pried out a carved wooden symbol, which he clutched hard without taking his eyes from her.

"I will not ask again," Eva insisted. "You don't touch her." She pointed at the wife, who cowered into a tight little ball with her hands over her head.

Seeing that the symbol was having no effect, the man changed tactics. Eva saw his stance shift, his arm flex. It was an action she was all too familiar with, and her hand had extended before he'd even swung the pan at her. She caught him by the wrist and, with her free hand, wrenched the implement away.

Her eerie touch and the sight of her monstrous hand made him howl and writhe in her grip. Eva couldn't deny that, just this once, his terror felt good rather than mortifying.

The cycle of terror had fallen now on the aggressor, rather than his victim.

However, as Eva considered him, Agatha's words intruded on the red haze filling her brain. This pathetic creature would begin the cycle again when she was gone. And she could not risk coming back a second time—if she could risk coming back at all.

Eva glanced once at the wife. She'd suffer for this, just as much as Eva might. Unless…

Unless Eva broke the cycle, once and for all.

The man's wrist snapped. His shouts stuck in his throat and his eyes bulged.

Pointing at his wife for clarity, Eva grated out a warning, each syllable chopped for emphasis. "You do not touch her." She jabbed her finger again, this time at his other arm. "Or I will know, and I will break your other hand."

At last, he began his howls afresh, his knees bending in pain. Eva finally let go and watched him sink to the floor.

Beyond him, the wife's gaze slowly shifted from her wailing husband up to Eva. But it was not fear alone that made her mouth hang open; Eva recognized the look as shock, rather than terror. Shock—and perhaps, in her eyes, gratitude?

"You should leave," she said, not knowing if the woman even understood her. "Leave, while you can." Before he healed, and lashed out once more.

Eva heard the thud of boots on the staircase at the end of the hall. The immigrant woman wasn't the only one who should leave. But there was no going back to Agatha's room. Not anymore.

Oh. Agatha. What would happen to her? How would she react once she found out? Would Eva's pursuers blame her?

What had Eva done?

Trying to ignore the twist in her heart, swallowing spikes of regret in her throat, she crossed the room, pulling her hat over her eyes, and pushed open the window.

The void between her and the empty street greeted her with a rush of cold air. Eva paused, eyes on the ground.

She had no choice.

Eva climbed out the window and lowered herself as much as she could. Her fingers clenched at the stones and wooden planks of the building one last time. Then, with a pang of regret, she let go.

The fall hurt less than she'd always anticipated, but not as little as would have been ideal. Pain shot through her ankles, her knees. But the joints and bones did not break as she hit the cobblestones, and the fall only knocked her to the ground.

She grunted, rolling back to her feet with her hands on her knees. Panting, she looked up at the open window one last time. She could hear shouting, but only from the tenement. Those around her either hadn't seen, or were merely staring.

But it never stayed "merely staring" for long. Eva forced herself to turn and walk down the street, each initial step a limp.

This was her price, she told herself, feeling her stride become a little easier as the pain passed. Her choice. Her fall. This would have to be worth it.


	6. Chapter 4

As she slipped into the maze that was Edinburgh, Eva realized she did miss the stony and winding streets, the chattering and self-absorbed hum of life, the warm sun cutting through the clouds and fog. As she shuffled into the sunlight, she peered under the brim of her hat at the crowded alley. Workers loading stock onto wagons, sour-faced customers, traveling laborers, and layabouts filled it from wall to wall, squeezing through every possible space.

It was claustrophobic, overwhelming-and wonderful. No one looked at her twice, disguised as she was.

But she couldn't linger. She either had to hide and wait out the husband's accusations and wrath elsewhere, or accomplish something. She had to find Victor. Otherwise, what was the point of walking out of that tiny tenement room?

When she found him, whoever he was, she would barrage him with every question that had run through her head the last several weeks.

Who was she?

Why could she remember nothing?

Why had that face—the first she'd ever known—turned on her?

Could he… She faltered, even just thinking the question. Could he tell her where her real home was? If she had others in her life who cared about her, regardless of how she looked?

That would be nice. As long as they weren't all monstrous like her. She winced at the thought. Not that she wouldn't be able to appreciate them, accept them, be one of them. But she could just picture the utter isolation a group of people like her might have to impose on themselves.

Luckily, the thought was also unlikely. Surely she'd have heard of such a group by now, even through Agatha's hearsay.

Eva shook her head, throwing Agatha back out of her mind. Her flatmate wasn't the most important thing right now; finding Victor was. And she'd never do that huddled here in the alley, not talking to anyone.

She sidled back from the wall, hugging her arms around herself to take up as little space as her large frame would allow, and approached a man with a sack thrown over his shoulder.

"I," she began, and then gave a little cough to try to make her voice less husky. "I am looking … Victor?"

"No," the laborer said impatiently. "On wi' ye, lad." He made a gesture for her to get out of his way.

She stood aside for the laborer to pass. Next time she woke up in an odd situation where she'd walk away with naught but a name, she thought sourly to herself, she was going to get a surname to go with it and spare herself the trouble.

Thick clouds rolled over the sky, cutting out the sun just as she exited this alley and turned into another crooked street. The dimness between the tenements deepened with shadows, a fresh chill biting into bare hands and faces.

But it was not this temporal change that made Eva pause. There was an odd weight and heat searing itself into her shoulders that made gooseflesh rise along her arms regardless of the cold. The weight of someone watching her.

And it was about this time that she realized the street behind her had emptied, carrying only the echoes of neighboring roads. Eva fidgeted with the seams inside her pockets and peered back over her shoulder.

She saw nothing but a peddler woman, now crouched against the wall and staring astonished into a pathway so narrow even an ordinary person couldn't stretch out their arms comfortably. But before Eva could turn herself about and question the woman, the peddler was back on her feet, abandoning her basket of fruits, and fleeing to the opposite end of the alley.

Eva felt her queries die on her lips. She considered the basket of fruit, wondering if she ought to take one, but suddenly found she had quite lost her appetite for apples.

By the time she reached the tiny gap between buildings to investigate for herself where the figure might have slid, she found nothing but shadows on bare brick and stone. A glance upward revealed only a strip of cold gray sky. Reluctant, Eva drew back, still touching the corner of the building where she'd leaned on it to peer up at the roof.

"Did ye see it?"

Eva turned around, snatching her hand back under her coat before someone could see. A nervous-looking, thin young man held a broom in both hands as if prepared to bash someone with it.

"Me ma says it were th' devil," he explained anxiously in an Irish brogue.

"Devil?" Eva repeated.

"There's a monster lurks these streets," he warned. "Comes out only at night. Some say he's a ghost … but it don't make him less real."

Eva shook her head once, lowering her eyes so that she would not draw the young man's fear to herself. "I saw nothing."

Devil-the very name she'd been given in her earliest days in Edinburgh. She felt a chill run over her neck.

The man with the broom left with a farewell she barely noticed, but life was beginning to return to the alleyway. No one seemed hostile yet, but Eva would take no chances. It would take only another glimpse, a shout, before someone seized sticks and stones—or guns.

 _Wonderful_.

Eva stalked out of the lane with her hands buried deep in her pockets again. But when she looked up, she thought she caught the edge of a shadow, high above where no one else might have noticed.

Ghost or demon or simply mortal menace, she did not like being watched.

Eva bared her teeth in a silent grimace. Trying to keep her eyes up and her head down at the same time-a feat that required her to move her hat a little-she walked along the facades of the buildings in time with the shadow. A few times, she bowled over crates, or almost tripped on dogs and small children. It earned her a fair share of cursing-and more vocabulary words. Though she doubted she could share any of these with Agatha.

The shadow darted ahead, forcing her to quicken her pace to keep up. It was like it wanted her to follow.

At once, it vanished, and at the same moment, Eva stumbled onto the edge of a noisy crowd filling the Grassmarket. Eva threw a glance heavenward again and, when she did not see the shadow again, chose to step further into the crush of bodies. Even with her height, she might lose herself, if she was very, very lucky.

There were so many people, all chattering and laughing and making comments using words she'd never heard from Agatha's mouth. As crowded as the tenement had been, at least the unwashed hordes were parceled off into their own rooms and floors. Even the alleyway, crowded and cramped, was somewhat contained. This was like the whole population threatened to swarm her at once.

The language that surrounded her was not the smooth, throaty French Agatha had been teaching her, but the patois of the native Scots and immigrant Irish. These were the first words she had known in her early months-curses, greetings, complaints, songs, names of objects. While those were not comfortable memories, there was something almost pleasant in hearing one's original tongue around her. She did not have to fight to understand, save the odd vocabulary word.

Lively music played on the fringes amid a cacophony of people making up their own melodies to loud, hoarse songs that seemed to be poking fun at something. Someone, she decided, once she listened hard enough through the unfamiliar words. She'd had only limited opportunities to hear music of any kind, so she stood close, loosely swaying her head to the song's rhythm.

A man with a loud voice walked along the edge of the crowd with a tray of drinks, one of which Eva took while his head was turned. After a sip, she quickly regretted her choice; the sour, pungent drink made her choke and tingled unpleasantly down her throat. Maybe it was one of those things that one could grow to like after trying it a few times?

Eva took another, hesitant sip. It was just as bad as the first. She stuck out her tongue. Someone else looked eager for it, and she happily passed it off rather than subject herself to more attempts to drink it.

Part of her wanted to return to Agatha's cramped flat and admit defeat. Part of her wanted simply to vanish. But part of her was seized with an odd, mad desire to whip off her hat, shed her coat, and show her whole monstrous form to the whole city to force an honest reaction from all passersby. There would be those who would scream, those who would try to arrest her on the basis that she'd surely done _something_ wrong … but maybe there would be those who would not panic. Maybe someone would even know who she was, or what had happened to her. Maybe someone would know the source of that shadow. Maybe someone would know Victor.

Eva touched the brim of her hat. She came so close to tearing it off that she lifted it up over her yellow eyes, clenching it tight, before she let go.

It was a passing thought, that's all. She would be safer keeping her head down and hiding. She would not cause her own destruction.

Restlessness drove her forward, past a group that was singing a song even she could tell was bawdy. With her head down and her lips pressed into a line, she blended into the crush with ease. No one grabbed at her, no one accused her of monstrosities or violence.

Hm. Maybe a crowd wasn't such a terrible thing after all. If she could just overcome the smell first.

Eva stood as near the back as was feasible to avoid blocking someone's view of whatever was happening nearer the platform. She was tall enough to see it all for herself without climbing onto carts or chairs or tables, as many of the others did around her. There were even men and women visible on the roofs of the surrounding buildings. Eva gave these a long, hard look, searching for anyone especially tall. If anyone there was of excessive height, it did not show.

A man walked unsteadily up the platform stairs. Another, this one in formal-looking clothes, read from a paper in his thick Scottish accent. Eva could only catch the rolling burr of his words, but no definition from this distance.

What interested her more was the look of this platform, elevated with a long beam suspended over it. Ropes tied in loops dangled from the beam.

Now the man who had come up the stairs spoke. Eva didn't catch his words, so she focused on his hands. They were tied behind his back. A captive of some kind?

She'd heard of prisons and punishment before, reading Blake as she had. _Songs of Experience_ and _Proverbs of Hell_ had much to say about them:

Prisons are built with stones of Law, Brothels with bricks of Religion.

Though she still had yet to figure out what a _brothel_ was. Agatha refused to explain that particular word.

She watched the man with the black hood put a sack over the tied man's head. She watched him loop the rope around his neck and position the long coil just so.

She watched, uncomprehending, as he pulled a lever and the floor opened from under the prisoner. He dropped through, jerked to a stop by the length of the rope despite the pull of gravity below. His body, tense in every limb, twitched and writhed—a toy on the end of a string to entertain the roaring crowd.

"Serves the bastard right," muttered a woman beside her, speaking with a lisp due to her missing teeth.

Eva scratched uncomfortably at her sleeves, still watching the man. His jerky movements became less and less frequent. "They'll cut him down now?" Surely his punishment was over now.

This question earned her a strange look. "Nah—he needs to stop dancing first," the woman insisted with a flick of her hand. "Otherwise, how can they be sure he won't get back up again? Can't have that. Can't have someone like that running 'round the city, when he oughta be dancing in hellfire for eternity."

It was only when he stopped moving that Eva realized what had happened, what the woman's metaphors meant.

She'd never seen death, not of humans anyway, but Agatha had had to explain it to her regarding a slaughterhouse and the beheading of chickens. The explanation had forced her to realize what the hard, yellow-white pieces she'd found in the mausoleum were: bones. Human bones, the barest evidence of death.

Even those, startling as the realization had been—once she put together what "death" really meant—had been easy to detach from the actual experience of dying. They were so far removed from the event, after all, and from the complete human form. But now, watching the man stop his thrashing, she could not detach. She had just watched a man die.

And this would be her fate if she were caught. Murdered on display, likely while a crowd shouted. And after…?

"Wh—" Eva had to swallow back the bile in her throat. "What will they do to him? Will he go in the … mausoleum?" The word came out more staccato than usual. "The graveyard?"

"More like he'll go to the university," was her explanation. "Be chopped up for all them students to study."

Eva felt queasy again, and the world tilted around her. She shut her eyes.

"Don't like to think of it myself," assured her fellow spectator, patting her arm. "Nasty business here, and in the world to come. Luckily these buggers deserves it."

They deserved _this_? This ultimate destruction of body and soul? What could someone do that deserved something so … final?

Surely no one deserved such punishment.

"What did he do?" Eva had to ask.

"Ye daft?" demanded the woman with a good-natured grin. "He's a thief. Stole about two hundred shillings over his lifetime."

Eva felt very glad, suddenly, that she'd dropped the apple she'd lifted when she went out last night and passed on the sour drink to someone else. Would they honestly hang her for something like that? It seemed petty, but she knew well enough of what people might do if they felt they had been wronged. She certainly had enough dents in her skin and memories of old bruises from her earliest days in the city, before she had learned to keep her head down a little better.

The woman gave her one last smile, left. Now that the "fun" was over, the people began to disperse back to their daily tasks. But even with the lingering threat of discovery now that she didn't have the volatile protection of the crowd, Eva found herself rooted to the ground.

Chopped up. Eva nervously rubbed her hands over the scars on her face.

The price of this knowledge felt suddenly too high. She nervously scratched her hair under the brim of her hat and backed away from the Grassmarket.


End file.
